27. Ryan Holmes

CEO, Hootsuite

November 17, 2015

By Staff

Age: 40 | 2014: #18

Vancouver’s tech poster boy is a big fan of the word “hustle.” Life advice? “Now is the best time to hustle.” Core value? “Hustle.” Words to live by from the founder of the local social-media-dashboard success story that counts the NHL, eBay, the White House, and Sony Music Entertainment among its high-profile clients. It’s unclear whether the (private) company is even close to profitable, though it probably would be if it halted its aggressive global growth strategy.

Holmes himself—fiercely independent and committed to Vancouver—is now investing in local startups as a way of building the tech industry here. Meanwhile, Hootsuite is building its own campus by connecting the three buildings it occupies west of Main Street. It may well go public in the next couple of years, analysts say, particularly after news that Open Text’s principal accounting officer has accepted the CFO position. (The success of Shopify, the e-commerce software company that went public, has inspired Holmes.) “You must always be open to taking risks,” he says. “Learn from failure; don’t fear it.”

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